Her tone spelled finality but I had no time to bestow upon the probable fate of Harry Underwood.  With a glad little cry, I drew Lillian down to my bedside and kissed her.

“Oh!  Lillian!” I exclaimed, “are you really going to have your baby girl after all?”

She nodded, and I held her close with a little prayer of thanksgiving that fate had finally relented and had given to this woman the desire of her heart, so long kept from her.

I saw now, and wondered why I had not realized before the reason for Lillian’s sudden abandonment of the rouge and powder and dyed hair which she had used so long.  Once she had said to me, “When my baby comes home, she shall have a mother with a clean face and pepper and salt hair, but until that time, I shall play the game with Harry.”

And so for Harry’s sake, for the man who was not worthy to tie her shoes, she had continued to crucify her real instincts in an effort to hide the worst feminine crime in her husband’s calendar—­advancing age.

“When will she come to you?” I asked, and then with a sudden remembrance of the only conditions under which Lillian’s little daughter could be restored to her, I added, “then her father is—­”

“Not dead, but dying,” Lillian returned gravely, “but oh, my dear, he sent for me two weeks ago and acknowledged the terrible wrong he did me.  I am vindicated at last, Madge—­at last.”

Her voice broke, and as she laid her cheek against my hand, I felt the happy tears which she must have kept back all through the excitement of my accident.  How like her to put by her own greatest experiences as of no consequence when weighed against another’s trouble!

I kissed her happily.  “Do you feel that you can tell me about it?” I asked.

“You and Dicky are the two people I want most to know,” she returned.  “Will confessed everything to me, and better still, to his mother.  I would have been glad to have spared the poor old woman, for she idolizes her son, but you remember I told you that although she loved me, he had made her believe the vile things he said of me.  It was necessary that she should know the truth, if after Will’s death I was to have any peace in my child’s companionship.

“Marion loves her grandmother dearly, and the old woman fairly idolizes the child, although her feebleness has compelled her to leave most of the care of the child to hired nurses.  There is where I am going to have my chance with my little girl.  I never shall separate her from her grandmother while the old woman lives, but from the moment she comes to me, no hireling’s hand shall care for her—­she shall be mine, all mine.”

Her voice was a paean of triumphant love.  My heart thrilled in sympathy with hers, but underneath it all I was conscious of a strong desire to have Harry Underwood reconciled to this new plan of Lillian’s.  The calmness with which she had spoken of their parting had not deceived me.  I knew that Lillian’s pride, already dragged in the dust by her first unhappy marital experience, would suffer greatly if she had to acknowledge that her second venture had also failed.  I tried to think of some manner in which I could remedy matters.  Unconsciously Lillian played directly into my hands.